Kirkwood plunged into work with an ardor that was not lost upon Phil. He rose early and kept office hours with a new faithfulness, and he frequently carried books and papers home for study. Something was impending, Phil surmised, in the affairs of the Sycamore Traction Company, for he had been to Indianapolis to confer with the New York lawyer who represented the trustee for the bondholders and they had made an inspection of the road together. It had always been Kirkwood's way when aroused to devote himself tirelessly to his client's business, and Phil had not failed to note how completely labor transformed him. His languor and indifference now disappeared; he spoke feelingly of the generosity of his Williams classmate, who had placed the Sycamore case in his hands. It was a great opportunity and he assured her that he meant to make the most of it.
He warned her that she was not to tell any one what he was engaged upon, and that she must not be surprised into confessions by her aunts. He began to visit the capital, always returning on the evening train, though she knew that he might more comfortably have spent the night in the city. He explained to Phil that he hoped to adjust the Sycamore's affairs without litigation.
"I'm just enough of an old fogy to cut myself out of a big fee by smoothing the wrinkles without a lawsuit. It's the professor in me, Phil; it's the academic taint."
And to this the obvious retort was, of course, that it was because of his highmindedness that he sought peaceable adjustments where more drastic measures would have been to his profit.
She, too, was putting forth her best energies, and he wasrelieved to find that she disposed of her work so lightly; even her frequent calamities were a matter for jesting. They made a joke of the washing of the supper dishes: he insisted on helping her, and would don an apron and do the rougher part of it. He declared that he had never been so well fed before, and that her cooking showed real genius. It would be a dark day when his fee in the traction case would make it possible to install a new maid-of-all work.
Phil was aware that their talk drifted often and with seeming inevitableness to the Bartletts. Her successes with the housekeeping were due to the friendly supervision of the sisters in Buckeye Lane. He liked to hear her recount the ways in which they were her guide and inspiration. In doubts she flew to them; but one or the other appeared almost daily at the cottage. "Rose showed me how to make that sponge cake," Phil would say; or, if the furniture in their little parlor had been rearranged, it was very likely Nan who had suggested the change. It was a considerable distance across town from the Kirkwoods' to Number 98 Buckeye Lane, and as these women were exceedingly busy it was not without sacrifice that they visited Phil so constantly. "Nan read me some new jokes she's just sending off this morning: I wonder how people think up such things," Phil would observe, turning, perhaps, with her hand on the pantry door; and she knew that her father's face lighted at the mention of Nan and her jokes.
The aunts had not been above planting in Phil's young breast the suspicion that her father was romantically "interested" in one of the Bartletts—as to which one they hoped she would enlighten them. They tried to keep track of the visits paid by the father and daughter to Buckeye Lane; their veiled inquiries were tinged also with suspicions that Amzi might be contemplating marriage with one of these maiden ladies of the Lane—the uncertainties in each case as to the bright star of particular adoration giving edge to their curiosity. The cautious approaches, the traps set in unexpected places, amused Phil when she was not angeredby them. As she viewed the matter it would be perfectly natural for her father to marry either of the Bartlett sisters, her only fear being that marriage would disturb the existing relations between the two houses which were now so wholly satisfactory.
Phil managed to visit her father's office every day or two, trips to "town" being among the Montgomery housewife's privileges, a part of her routine. Much visiting was done in Main Street, and there was always something to take one into Struby's drug-store, which served as a club. Even in winter there was hot chocolate and bouillon to justify the sociably inclined in lingering at the soda-water tables by the front windows. Phil, heedful of the warnings of the court-house clock, managed to keep in touch with current history without jeopardizing the regularity of meals at home. She was acquiring the ease of the Bartletts in maintaining a household with a minimum of labor and worry. Her aunts had convoyed her to Indianapolis to buy a gown for the coming-out party, which was now fixed for the middle of November; and they were to return to the city shortly for a fitting. All Main Street was aware that Phil was to be brought out; the aunts had given wide publicity to the matter; they had sighingly confessed to their friends the difficulties, the labor, the embarrassment of planting their niece firmly in society.
Phil, dropping into her father's office in the middle of an afternoon and finding him absent, dusted it from force of habit and began turning the pages of a battered copy of "Elia" she kept tucked away in an alcove that contained the Indiana Reports. A sign pinned on the door stated that her father would return in half an hour. This card, which had adorned the door persistently for several years, had lately ceased to prophesy falsely, Phil knew, and she thought she heard her father on the stairs when a young man she did not at once recognize opened the door and glanced about, then removed his hat and asked if Mr. Kirkwood would return shortly.
"I'm Mr. Charles Holton," said the visitor.
For a man to prefix "mister" to his own name was contrary to local usage, and the manner, the voice, the city clothes of Charles Holton at once interested Phil. She was sitting in her father's old swivel chair, well drawn in under his big flat-top desk, across which she surveyed the visitor at leisure. She placed him at once in his proper niche among the Holtons: it was of him that people were speaking as a Montgomery boy who was making himself known at the capital. He was the brother of Ethel and Fred, and clearly an alert and dashing person.
"Pardon me; but I remember you perfectly, Miss Kirkwood. I hope we may dispense with the formality of an introduction—we old Montgomery people—and that sort of thing!"
Holton carried a stick, which was not done in Montgomery save by elderly men, or incumbents of office, like Judge Walters or Congressman Reynolds. His necktie also suggested more opulent avenues than Main Street.
"By the outward and visible sign upon the portal I assume that Mr. Kirkwood will return shortly."
He referred to his watch, absently turned the stem-key, and sat down in one of the chairs which Phil had lately dusted.
"I used to see you around a lot when I was a boy—you and your pony; but we've all been away so much—my sister Ethel and I. You know Ethel?"
"I've seen her," said Phil.
"We've just been breaking up our old home here. Rather tough, too, when you think we're quite alone. We've sold the old house; sorry, but the best offer I got was from a doctor who wants to turn it into a drink-cure sanatorium. Tough on the neighbors, but there you are! It didn't seem square to stand in the way of bracing up booze victims."
He expected her approval of this attitude; and Phil murmured phrases that seemed to fill the gap he left for them.
"Had to go to the highest bidder—you can hardly giveaway an old house like that in a place like this. Neighbors are kicking, but it wasn't my fault."
Phil said she supposed that was so.
She was still noting various small items of Holton's raiment—his tan oxford shoes, brilliant socks, and brown derby. A brown derby seemed odd in Montgomery. From the pocket of his sackcoat protruded the cuffs of tan gloves, and he wore an inconspicuous watch chain passed from pocket to pocket of his waistcoat. Not even the most prosperous of the college seniors had ever presented to Phil's eye a variety of adornments so tastefully chosen, a color scheme so effective. The interview seemed to be to the young man's liking. He talked with assurance, holding his light stick with one hand, and balancing his hat on his knee with the other. Often before men had come into the office as Phil sat there and she had conversed with them while they waited for her father. She had usually exhausted the possibilities in forecasting her father's return at such times; but this gentleman seemed in no wise impatient. He spoke of the world's affairs lightly and with a flattering confidence in the understanding and sympathy of his auditor. The theatrical attractions at the capital, the promise of grand opera in Chicago, the political changes, these were things of passing interest, but nothing to grow feverish about.
"The new trolley line will make a lot of difference to towns like Montgomery—revolutionize things in fact. Part of the great social change that is apparent all over the Middle West. There won't be any country folks any more; all hitched on to the cities—the rubes derubenized and inter-urbanized!"
Phil admitted that the changes he suggested were of significance. Her father often used similar phrases in speaking of tendencies and influences; but it was to be expected of him. The same ideas as expressed by Charles Holton derived a certain importance from the fact that he condescended to utter them; they gained weight and authority from his manner of presenting them. He was not only a man of theworld, but an acute observer of social phenomena; and he was a new sort. She had not known any one like him. The memory of her two meetings with Fred came back to her: she recalled them the more clearly by reason of the contrast between the brothers.
"Your brother has moved back to the farm," she suggested to gain confirmation of a relationship which seemed hardly plausible with this radiant young person before her.
"Oh, Fred! Well, I'd have you know that I offered to take Fred in with me, but he wouldn't see it. I'd like the folks over here to know that; but I couldn't do anything with him. He camped on one of our Mexican mines so long that he is afraid of cities,—isn't city-broke,—and seemed relieved when I suggested that he take the farm. It's no great shakes of a farm as farms go, but he's one of these plodding chaps who like a hard job. He came back and took a look around and said it was back to the soil for him! So there was the farm, just waiting for somebody to tackle it. I haven't seen him for some time,—I'm terribly busy,—but I dare say he's out there, an earnest young husbandman anxious to become one of these prosperous farmers who push the price of bread out of sight and cry to have the tariff taken off champagne. You don't happen to know Fred?"
"I've met your brother," said Phil with reserve.
"Well, I suppose we Montgomery folks are all acquainted without being introduced. Lots of 'em moving to Indianapolis; I'm thinking of organizing a club over there to keep the Montgomery people together—an annual dinner, say; and that sort of thing. Do you know, it's rather nice of you to be talking to me in this friendly, neighborly way; it really is."
As Phil seemed not to see at once wherein the particular kindness of it lay, he smiled and continued:—
"Our families haven't been so friendly, you know. Pardon me!"
Phil, seeing now what he meant, colored deeply, andglancing out of the window was rewarded by a glimpse of Amzi's back. He had just concluded an observation and was turning into the bank.
"You will pardon me, won't you," pleaded young Holton, lowering his voice.
"I think father will be here shortly," Phil remarked irrelevantly.
He had opened himself to the suspicion that he had broached the subject of the antipathy between their houses merely to test its dramatic value. To be talking to the daughter of a woman with whom his uncle had eloped made a situation; it is possible that he liked situations that called into action his wits and an evident gift for using his voice and eyes. He had been rapidly noting Phil's good points. He wished to impress her, and he was not convinced that the impression he had made was favorable or that she forgave him for touching, however lightly, upon the ungrateful topic of her mother's dereliction. He had never thought of his Uncle Jack's escapade with Mrs. Kirkwood concretely; it had happened long ago, before he became attentive to such things; but the young woman with whom he was now conversing visualized the episode for him. In his mind there was an element of picturesqueness in that joint page of Holton-Montgomery history. He wondered whether Phil looked like her mother. Phil was pretty enough, though in repose she seemed rather spiritless. She was swinging herself in the swivel chair, carelessly, and since his reference to the old scandal he saw or imagined that he saw her manner change from courteous interest to a somewhat frosty indifference. His pride was pricked by the sense of his blunder. He flattered himself that in his intercourse with men and women he was adroit in retrieving errors, and his instinct warned him that the curtain must not fall upon a scene that left him in discomfiture at the back of the stage.
"It pleased Ethel and me very much to have an invitation to your party, Miss Kirkwood. It was nice of you to ask us, and we shall certainly come over, even if I have to giveup a trip to New York I had expected to make at just that time. Let me see, it's the twentieth, isn't it? Well, I guess I can make them wait down there. We Western folks don't often get a chance to make New Yorkers wait."
Phil was disposed to be magnanimous. He undoubtedly wished to be agreeable; and it was his uncle, a remote person whom she had never seen, who had decamped with her mother. It was hardly just to hold him accountable for his uncle's misdeeds. She wondered whether the uncle had been like this nephew, or whether he was more like William Holton, whom she had seen frequently all her life. In her encounters with Fred Holton, she had only vaguely associated him with that other and indubitably wicked Holton who had eloped with her mother.
She was conscious that some one was stirring in the room overhead, and she became attentive to the sounds. Her father had asked delay in disposing of the apparatus of the old photograph gallery; he had wanted to look the old stuff over, he had said, and he wished also to utilize the darkroom in developing the pictures he had taken on their last outing. One of the objects of her call this afternoon had been to urge him to haste, as Bernstein wanted to move his remodeling shop into the rooms at once.
"I make it a rule of my life," Holton went on, "to duck when it comes to other people's mistakes. I make enough of my own without shouldering those my friends and relations are responsible for—particularly my relations. For example, if dear old Fred wants to throw himself away on a farm, that's his trouble. I did all I could to save him. And when I had done that, I had done my best, and I'm a busy man with troubles of my own!"
Her reception of this was not wholly satisfactory. She made in fact no reply at all.
"Excuse me," she said, hearing steps unmistakably; "I think maybe father is on the floor above. If you will wait here, I'll run up and see."
He saw her erect for the first time as she passed him. Herapparent languor as she swung in the old creaky chair had belied what was evidently her more natural manner. The few steps necessary to carry her from the desk to the door were taken lightly, with a long, free stride. Captain Wilson, in apostrophizing her as the Diana of Main Street, had paid no inappropriate tribute to Phil's graceful carriage. Holton rose as she crossed the room, noting her brown cheek, the golden glint in her hair, her finely modeled features, her clear brown eyes and their dark lashes. His eyes still rested upon the door for a moment after it had closed upon her. Then he struck the floor with his stick, and whistled softly. "Lordy!" he ejaculated.
Phil accused herself of dullness in not having thought earlier of the photograph gallery. Her father must have been conducting himself very quietly there or she would have heard him before. It had been a bright day and he had undoubtedly been taking advantage of the sun to do his printing. She had always encouraged his experiments in photography, which afforded him one of his few recreations. He owned a fine camera and he gave to every detail of the photographer's art the care he bestowed upon anything that deeply interested him. They had bound in portfolios many of the views obtained in their adventures afield, and he had won prizes at state and national exhibitions of camera societies. Phil was relieved to know that he was developing these newest plates, for now there would be no excuse for retaining the deserted gallery and it could be turned over to Bernstein without further delay.
It had grown late, and even under the glazed roof she did not at once make him out.
"Daddy!" she called softly.
She had broken in upon one of his deep reveries, and as she spoke he started guiltily. The oblong of glass he had been holding, staring at in the lessening light, fell with a crash, breaking into countless pieces.
"Oh, daddy! Did I scare you like that! Hope it wasn't one of the best negatives that went to smash—hard luckto wipe one of those Autumn on Sugar Creek gems out of existence!"
"It's all right, Phil—all right. It was only an old negative. I was looking over the rubbish here and amused myself by printing some of the old plates. There are a lot of old ghosts hidden away there in the closet. This was an old shop, you know, dating back to the Civil War, and there are negatives here of a lot of our local heroes. I wonder if it's right to throw them away? It's like exterminating a generation to destroy them. There must be people who would like to have prints of some of these."
"We might sell them to that new photographer for money enough to paint the building," she suggested. "The real owner would owe us a lot of rent if he ever turned up, which he never will. That would be our only way of getting even."
"There spoke a practical mind, Phil!"
She knew from the poor result of his effort to appear cheery that something had occurred to depress him. His own associations with Montgomery had been too recent for the resurrection of old citizens to have any deep significance for him.
"We must go, Phil; I didn't mean for you to catch me here. I've wasted the whole afternoon—but some of the Sugar Creek views have come out wonderfully. We must clean up and turn the room over to Bernstein right away."
Her alert eyes marked the Sugar Creek pictures at one end of a shelf built against the window, but from his position at the moment she had surprised him in his brooding she knew that he had not been studying them. Nor did these new prints from old plates present likenesses of Montgomery's heroes of the sixties; but there were three—a little quaint by reason of the costumes—of a child, a girl of fourteen, and a young woman; and no second glance was necessary to confirm her instant impression that these represented her mother—the mother of whom she had no memory whatever. There were photographs and a miniature of her mother at home, and at times she had dreamed over them; andthere was a portrait done by an itinerant artist which hung in her Uncle Amzi's house, but this, her Aunt Josephine had once told her, did not in the least resemble Lois.
Kirkwood tried clumsily to hide the prints.
"No; Phil, please don't!" he exclaimed harshly.
"Of course, I may see them, daddy,—of course!"
He allowed her to take them from him.
"It's mamma," said Phil. "How dear they are!" she murmured softly.
As she turned the prints to catch the dimming light, he watched her, standing inertly with his elbow on the shelf.
"Isn't it odd that I never saw any of these! even Uncle Amy hasn't them."
She bent over the print of the child, who stood with a hoop, smiling as though in delight at her belated rescue from oblivion.
"You were going to give these to me, weren't you, daddy?" She was running over the others. One that showed the mature woman in a fur cape long out of fashion and with a fur cap perched on her head, held her longest.
"If you want them," said her father, "you shall have them, of course. I will touch them up a bit in the morning."
"Maybe," said Phil looking at him quickly, "it is better not to keep them. Was it one of these plates that broke?"
"Yes," said Kirkwood; "it was this one"; and he indicated the picture that revealed his wife in her young womanhood.
It was over this that he had been dreaming alone in the dim gallery when she had interrupted his reverie. The pity of it all, the bleak desolation of his life, smote her sharply, now that she had caught a glimpse of the ghosts scampering off down the long vistas. With an abrupt gesture she flung aside the melancholy reminder of his tragedy.
"Dear old daddy!" She held him in her strong arms and kissed him.
She felt that all these spectres must be driven back intotheir world of shadows, and she seized the prints and tore them until only little heaps of paper remained and these she scattered upon the floor.
"Are these the plates?"
He indicated them with a nod. One after the other they crashed echoingly in the bare gallery. She accomplished the destruction swiftly and with certainty. One that fell on edge undamaged she broke with her heel.
Then she took a match from his pocket and lit the gas in one of the old burners. The light revealed a slight smile on his face, but it was not his accustomed smile of good humor. His eyes were very sad and gentle.
"Thank you, dear old Phil! I guess that's the best way, after all. It must be time to go home now. Are you ready?"
"Wait here a minute—you had better pull down the windows and lock up. I'll close the office and you can meet me on the landing."
She went out, closing the door, and ran down to the office, where Charles Holton stood at the window looking out upon Main Street, where the electric lamps were just sputtering into light.
"Ah," he cried turning toward her with a bow, "I'd begun to think you had forgotten my unworthy presence on earth!"
"Not at all, Mr. Holton. I'm sorry, but my father is too much engaged to see you to-day. If you really want to see him you can come in to-morrow."
This was not what he had expected. Dismissal was in her tone rather more than in her words. Their eyes met for a moment in the dim dusk and he would have prolonged the contact; but she walked to the desk and stood there, looking down at the copy of "Elia" which lay as she had left it when he had interrupted her reading. She refused to be conscious of his disappointment or to make amends for having caused him to wait needlessly. He turned at the door.
"I hope I haven't put you to any inconvenience?" he remarked, but without resentment.
"Not at all, Mr. Holton. Good-afternoon!"
"Good-day, Miss Kirkwood."
She listened until his step died away down the stair and then went out and whistled for her father.
The Holton farmhouse, a pretentious place in the day of Frederick Holton's grandfather, was now habitable and that was the most that could be said for it. When the second generation spurned the soil and became urbanized, the residence was transformed from its primal state into a country home, and the family called it "Listening Hill Farm." Its austere parlor of the usual rural type was thrown together with the living-room, the original fireplace was reconstructed, and running water was pumped to the house by means of a windmill. The best of the old furniture had been carried off to adorn the town house, so that when Fred succeeded to the ownership it was a pretty bare and comfortless place. Samuel had never lived there, though the farm had fallen to him in the distribution of his father's estate; but he had farmed it at long range, first from Montgomery, and latterly, and with decreasing success, from Indianapolis after his removal to the capital. The year before Fred's arrival no tenant had been willing to take it owing to the impoverished state of the land.
Most of the farms in the neighborhood were owned by town people, and operated by tenants. As for Fred, he knew little about agriculture. On the Mexican plantation which his father and Uncle William had controlled, he had learned nothing that was likely to prove of the slightest value in his attempt to wrest a living from these neglected Hoosier acres. His main qualifications for a farming career were a dogged determination to succeed and a vigorous, healthy body.
The Holtons had always carried their failures lightly, andeven Samuel, who had died at Indianapolis amid a clutter of dead or shaky financial schemes, was spoken of kindly in Montgomery. Samuel had saved himself with the group of politicians he had persuaded to invest in the Mexican mine by selling out to a German syndicate just before he died; and Samuel had always made a point of taking care of his friends. He had carried through several noteworthy promotion schemes with profit before his Mexican disasters, and but for the necessity of saving harmless his personal and political friends he might not have left so little for his children. So spake the people of Montgomery.
Charles Holton was nearing thirty, and having participated in his father's political adventures, and been initiated into the mysteries of promotion, he had a wide acquaintance throughout central Indiana. He had been graduated from Madison, and in his day at college had done much to relieve the gray Calvinistic tone of that sedate institution. It was he who had transformed the old "college chorus"—it had been a "chorus" almost from the foundation—into a glee club, and he had organized the first guitar and banjo club. The pleasant glow he left behind him still hung over the campus when Fred entered four years later. Charles's meteoric social career had dimmed the fact (save to a few sober professors) that he had got through by the skin of his teeth. Fred's plodding ways, relieved only by his prowess at football, had left a very different impression. Fred worked hard at his studies because he had to; and even with persistence and industry he had not shone brilliantly in the scientific courses he had elected. The venerable dean once said that Fred was a digger, not a skimmer and skipper, and that he would be all right if only he dug long enough. He was graduated without honors and went South to throw in his fortunes with his father's Mexican projects. He was mourned at the college as the best all-round player a Madison eleven had ever boasted; but this was about all.
When he accepted Listening Hill Farm as his share of his father's estate, Fred had a little less than one thousanddollars in cash, which he had saved from the salaries paid him respectively by the plantation and mining companies. This had been deposited as a matter of convenience in an Indianapolis bank and he allowed it to remain there. He realized that this money must carry him a long way, and that every cent must go into the farm before anything came out of it. He had moved to the farm late in the summer—just in time to witness the abundant harvests of his neighbors.
One of the friendliest of these was a young man named Perry, who had charge of Amzi Montgomery's place. Perry belonged to the new school of farmers, and he had done much in the four years that he had been in the banker's employ to encourage faith in "book farming," as it had not yet ceased to be called derisively. He was a frank, earnest, hard-working fellow whose ambition was to get hold of a farm of his own as quickly as possible. He worked Amzi's farm on shares, with certain privileges in the matter of feeding cattle. Amzi picked him up by chance and with misgivings; but Perry had earned the biggest dividends the land had ever paid. Perry confided to Fred a hope he had entertained of leasing the Holton farm for himself when his contract with Montgomery expired. Now that Fred had arrived on the scene he explained to the tyro exactly what he had meant to do with the property. As he had seriously canvassed the situation for a couple of years, witnessing the failures of the last two tenants employed by Samuel Holton, Fred gladly availed himself of his advice.
Fred caught from Perry the spirit of the new era in farming. It no longer sufficed to scratch the earth with a stick and drop in a seed; the earth itself must be studied as to its weaknesses and the seed must be chosen with intelligent care. One of the experts from the state agricultural school, in the field to gather data for statistics, passed through the country, and spent a week with Fred for the unflattering reason that the Holton acres afforded material for needed information as to exhausted soils. He recommended books for Fred to read, and what was more to the point sent ayoung man to plan his work and initiate him into the mysteries of tilling and fertilizing. The soil expert was an enthusiast, and he left behind him the nucleus of a club which he suggested that the young men of the neighborhood enlarge during the winter for the discussion of new methods of farm efficiency.
Fred hired a man and went to work. He first repaired the windmill and assured the water-supply of the house and barn. A farmer unembarrassed by crops, he planned his campaign a year ahead. He worked harder on his barren acres than his neighbors with the reward of their labor in sight. He tilled the low land in one of his fallow fields and repaired the fences wherever necessary. His most careful scrutiny failed to disclose anything on which money could be realized at once beyond half a dozen cords of wood which he sent to town and sold and the apples he had offered for sale in the streets of Montgomery. These by-products hardly paid for the time required to market them. Perry had suggested that winter wheat be tried on fifty acres which he chose for the experiment, and in preparing and sowing the land Fred found his spirits rising. The hired man proved to be intelligent and capable, and Fred was not above learning from him. Fred did the cooking for both of them as part of his own labor.
Some of his old friends, meeting him in Main Street on his visits to town, commiserated him on his lot; and others thought William Holton ought to do something for Fred, as it was understood that he was backing Charles in his enterprises. Still other gossips, pointing to the failure of the Mexican ventures, inclined to the belief that Fred was a dull fellow, and that he would do as well on the farm as anywhere else.
On a Sunday afternoon in this same November, Fred had cleaned up after his midday meal with the hired man and was sprawled on an old settle reading when a motor arrived noisily in the dooryard. Charles was driving and with him were three strangers. Fred went out to meet his brother, whointroduced his companions as business men from Indianapolis.
"We're taking a run over the route of the new trolley line you've probably read about in the papers. Hadn't heard of it yet? Well, it's going to cut the Sycamore line at right angles in Montgomery, and run down into the coal fields. We're going to haul coal by electricity—a new idea in these parts—and it's going to be a big factor in stimulating manufactures in small centers. It's going to be a big thing for this section—your farm is worth twenty dollars more an acre just on our prospectus."
"No doubt you'd be glad to take that twenty right now," remarked one of the strangers.
"Oh, I'll wait for it," replied Fred, laughing.
"Are you implying that you're likely to have to wait?" demanded Charles. "My dear boy, we're doing this just for you farmers. In the old days the railroads were all in league against the poor but honest farmer; he was crippled as much as he was helped by the railroads; but with the trolley the farmer can be in the deal from the jump. We want every farmer on this line to have an interest; we're going to give him a chance to go in. Am I right, Evans?"
Evans warmed to the topic. He was a young broker and wore city clothes quite as good as Charles's. It was going to be a great thing for the country people; the possibilities of the trolley line had not yet been realized. Social and economic conditions were to be revolutionized, and the world generally would be a very different place when the proposed line was built. Charles allowed his friends to do most of the talking and they discussed the project eloquently for an hour.
The men refused Fred's invitation to go indoors, and said they would walk to the highway and the machine could pick them up.
When the brothers were alone, Charles spoke of the farm.
"I see you've got to work. The whole thing looks better than I ever saw it. I'm glad you've painted the barn red;there's nothing like red for a barn. I must make a note of that; all barns should be painted red."
With a gesture he colored all the barns in the world to his taste. Fred grinned his appreciation of his brother's humor.
"I thought that on Sundays all you young farmers hitched a side-bar buggy to a colt and gave some pretty girl a good time."
"I'd be doing just that but for two reasons—I haven't the colt or the side-bar, and I don't know any girls. What about this trolley line? I thought the field was crowded now."
"Oh, Uncle Will and I are going to put this one through and we're going to make some money out of it, too. There's money in these things if you know how to handle 'em. It's in the promotion, not the operating."
"But I heard in town that the Sycamore line isn't doing well. There are rumors—"
"Oh, I know about that; it's only a fuss among the fellows who are trying to control it to reorganize and squeeze the bondholders. If father had lived he'd have kept it level. But we're all out of it—away out and up the street."
"Glad to hear it," Fred remarked. The gift of easy and picturesque speech had been denied him. All his life he had heard his father talk in just this strain; and his Uncle William, while less voluble, was even more persuasive and convincing. Charles did not always ring true, but any deficiencies in this respect were compensated for by his agreeable and winning manners. Fred had the quiet man's distrust of ready talkers; but he admired his brother. Charles was no end of a bright fellow and would undoubtedly get on.
"I tell you what I'll do with you, old man," Charles continued. "I suppose you already know some of these farmers around here. We're going to give them every chance to go in with us—let 'em in on the ground floor. We feel that this should be the people's line in the broadest sense,—give 'em a share of the benefits,—not merely that they can flip a can of milk on board one of our cars and hustle itdirect to the consumer and get back coal right at their door, but they shall participate in the profits they help to create. Now listen to this; there's not much you can do this winter out here and I stopped to make you an offer to solicit stock subscriptions among the country people. A lot of these farmers are rich fellows,—the farmers are getting altogether too much money for their own good,—and here's an ideal investment for them, a chance to add to the value of their farms and at the same time earn a clean six per cent on our bonds and share in the profits on a percentage of common that we're giving bondholders free gratis for nothing. What do you say to taking a hand with us? We'll put you on a salary right away if you say so. The very fact that you've chosen to come here to live and take up farming will give you standing with the country folks."
Fred smiled at this.
"On the other side of the sketch the fact that I'm as ignorant of farming as the man in the moon is likely to rouse their suspicions. I'm much obliged, Charlie, but my job's right here. I'm going to try to raise something that I can haul to town in a wagon and get money for. I haven't your business genius. It would seem queer to me to go about asking people to take their money out of the bank to give me in exchange for pieces of paper that might not be good in the end. And besides, a good many of these country people swallowed the same hook when it was baited with Sycamore. It's not a good time to try the same bait in this neighborhood,—not for the Holton family, at any rate."
"Mossback! I tell you we're out of Sycamore with clean hands. Don't you know that the big fellows in New York are the men who get in on such promotions as this and clean up on it! I'm giving you a chance that lots of men right here in this county would jump at. It's a little short of a miracle that a trolley coal road hasn't been built already. And think, too, of the prestige our family will get out of it. We've always been the only people in Montgomery that had any 'git up and git.' You don't want to forget that your name Holton is anasset—an asset! Why, over in Indianapolis the fact that I'm one of the Montgomery Holtons helps me over a lot of hard places, I can tell you. Of course, father had plowed the ground, and the more I hear about him the more I admire him. He had vision—he saw things ahead."
"And he came pretty near dying busted," observed Fred.
"But no man lost a cent through him!" Charles flashed. "That makes me swell up with pride every time I think of it—that he took care of his friends. He saw things big, and those Mexican schemes were all right. If he'd lived, they would have pulled through and been big moneymakers."
They had been walking slowly towards Charles's machine.
"I'm not saying anything against father," said Fred; "but the kind of things he took up strike me as dangerous. I know all about that plantation and the mine, too, for that matter. I don't blame father for sending me down there, but I wish I had back the years I put on those jobs."
"Oh, rot! The experience was a big thing for you. And you got paid for it. You must have saved some money—wasn't any way to spend money down there."
"I don't keep an automobile," remarked Fred ruefully.
"By Jove, I can't afford it myself, but I've got to make a front. Now those fellows—"
His companions were hallooing from the highway to attract his attention. He waved and shouted that he was coming.
"Those fellows are in touch with a lot of investors. Nice chaps. I promised to get 'em home for dinner, and I must skip. You'd better think over my proposition before turning it down for good. I don't like to think of your being out here all winter doing nothing. You might as well take a hand with us. I'll guarantee that you won't regret it."
"I don't believe I care to try it. I'm a born rube, I guess; I like it out here. And I'm going to stick until I make good or bust."
Charles had cranked his machine and jumped in.
"Look here, Fred," he said, raising his voice above thenoise of the engine, "when I can do anything for you, I want you to call on me. And if you need money at any time, I want you to come to me or go to Uncle Will. In fact, he's a little sore because you don't drop in on him oftener. So long!"
The machine went skimming down the road, and when it reached the pike and Charles picked up his friends, Fred watched its slow ascent of Listening Hill, and waited for it to disappear beyond the crest.
Fred moved off across the fields in quest of Perry. Charles never left him wholly happy. His long absence from home had in a way lessened his reliance on family ties, and an interview with his brother deepened the sense of his own dullness. He wondered whether it were not proof of his general worthlessness that he was so quickly adjusting himself to the conditions of rural life; and yet from such reflections his spirit quickly rebounded. In the very soil itself, he felt a kinship, born of a hidden, elusive, cramped vein of poetic feeling that lay deep in his nature. All life, he vaguely realized, is of a piece: man and the earth to which he is born respond to the same laws. He contemplated the wheatfield, tilled partly by his own hands, with a stirring of the heart that was new to his experience. He was wedded to this land; his hope was bound up in it; and he meant to serve it well.
He sprang over the fence into a woods pasture on Amzi Montgomery's farm and strode on. He picked up a walnut and carried it in his hand, sniffing the pungent odor of the rind. It was as warm as spring, and the dead leaves, crisp and crackling under his tread, seemed an anomaly. The wood behind him, he crossed a pasture toward the barn and hesitated, seeing that Perry was entertaining visitors. He had fallen into the habit of dropping in at the Perrys' on Sunday afternoons and he was expected to-day, so he kept on. As he reached the barn lot, he identified Amzi Montgomery and Phyllis Kirkwood, to whom Perry was apparently dilating on the good points of a Jersey calf that was eyeing the visitors wonderingly.
"Don't be afraid, Holton; my lecture is just over. You'veheard it before and I'm not going to repeat it," Perry called to him.
"How do you do, Mr. Holton," said Phil.
He pulled off his hat and walked up to shake hands with her.
"I didn't expect to find you here. I usually come over Sunday afternoons."
"Does that mean you wouldn't have come if you'd known we were here!" laughed Phil. "Oh, Uncle Amy, this is Mr. Fred Holton. He's your next-door neighbor."
Amzi turned from his observation of the calf and took the cigar from his mouth. He remembered Fred Holton as a boy and the young man had latterly fallen within his range of vision in Main Street. He availed himself of this nearer view to survey Samuel Holton's younger son deliberately. Fred waited an instant for the banker to make a sign. Amzi took a step toward him and Fred advanced and offered his hand.
"How d' ye do, Fred," said Amzi, and looked him over again. He addressed him quite as cordially as he would have spoken to any other young man he might have found there. "Perry has told me about you. I guess you've got quite a job over there."
"Yes, but I was looking for a job when I took it," said Fred.
"I like being a farmer myself," said the banker, "when I know the corn's growing while I'm in bed in town."
"I think I'll stay up nights to watch my corn grow, if it ever does," said Fred.
"That land of yours is all right," said Amzi amiably, "but it's got to be brought up. That farm's been cursed with overdrafts, and overdrafts in any business are bad."
"That's a new way of putting it," Fred replied, "but I'm sure it's sound doctrine. You can't take out what you don't put in."
"That," said Amzi, feeling in his pocket for his matchbox, "is a safe general principle."
He passed his cigar-case to Perry and Fred, commended his own cigars humorously, and looked Fred over again as the young man refused, explaining that he had grown used to a pipe and was afraid of the shock to his system of a good cigar.
"We were going to take a walk over the place; Mr. Montgomery wants to see his orchard. Come along, won't you?" said Perry.
Fred waited for a confirmation of the tenant's invitation.
"Yes; come along, Fred," said Amzi.
His manner toward Holton was that of an old acquaintance; he called him Fred quite as though it were the most natural thing in the world for him to do so. Phil and Perry moved off together and Amzi walked along beside Fred across a field of wheat stubble toward the orchard that stretched away on a slope that corresponded to the rise of Listening Hill in the highway. He talked of fruit-growing in which he appeared to be deeply interested, and declared that there was no reason why fruit should be only an insect-blighted by-product of such farms as his; that intelligent farmers were more and more taking it up. He confessed his firm belief in scientific farming in all its branches. Most men in small towns keep some touch with the soil. In a place like Montgomery the soil is the immediate source of urban prosperity, and in offices and stores men discuss crop conditions and prospects as a matter of course. Amzi owned a number of farms in different parts of the county, but this one that had been long in the family was his particular pride. He paused now and then to point out features of his possessions for Fred's admiration.
"Land," he observed reflectively, "is like a man or a horse; you got to treat 'em right or they won't work. Thunder! You think you'll stick it out over there, do you?"
"I've got to; and I want to! I want to make it go!"
Amzi glared at him a moment with puffed cheeks. Fred had spoken with warmth, and being unfamiliar with the banker's habit of trying to blow up occasionally, for noreason whatever, he was a little appalled by Amzi's manner of receiving his declaration.
"If you mean it like that," said the banker, "you will make it go. It's the wanting to do a thing real hard that brings it round. Is that gospel?"
He blurted his question with a ferociousness that again startled Fred; but he was beginning to suspect that this was the banker's usual way of conversing, and his awe of him diminished. Amzi was an amusing person, with a tang of his own; and he clearly meant to be kind. It was necessary to answer the banker's last explosion and Fred replied soberly:
"I hope it is; I hope the wanting to do it will help in the doing."
Amzi made no response to this. He seemed to ignore it, and spoke of Perry admiringly, as the kind of man he liked, quoting statistics of the wheat yield of the field they were traversing, and then stopped abruptly.
"Thunder! How did they come to give you the farm?"
"I took it: I chose to take it. It was by an agreement between my brother and sister and me. I'm not sure but that I got the best of the partition. The stocks and bonds father left didn't mean anything to me. I don't know anything about such things."
"They let you have the farm as your share; you were afraid of the other stuff?"
"Yes; it didn't look very good and I was perfectly satisfied. I thought the arrangement fair enough to me: Charlie knew about the other things and I didn't. Most of them were very doubtful."
"They told you they were doubtful; you didn't know anything about them. Was that the way of it?"
"Yes; that was about the way of it, Mr. Montgomery."
Amzi glared and drew out his handkerchief to mop his face.
"I saw an automobile come out of your place awhile ago and climb the hill toward town. Charlie been to see you?"
"Yes. He had some friends with him from the city. Charlie knows no end of people."
"There are people like that," said Amzi, kicking a clod, and in doing so nearly losing his equilibrium; "there are people with a talent for knowing folks." This was not an important observation, nor was it at all relevant. Mr. Montgomery had merely gone as far as he cared to in the discussion of the distribution of Samuel Holton's estate and this was his way of changing the subject.
Amzi walked ahead with Perry when they met at the edge of the orchard and Phil loitered behind with Fred. A hawk swung from the cloudless blue; sparrows, disturbed by these visitors, flew down the orchard aisles in panic. The air was as dry as the stubble of the shorn fields. From the elevation crowned by the orchard it was possible to survey the neighborhood and Phil and Fred paused in silence for several minutes, with their faces turned toward the creek.
Seeing Phil thus was very different from seeing her across a fence in the moonlight, or meeting her at her kitchen door. Her new dark-blue gown with hat to match struck him as being very stylish, as indeed, they were, having come from the best shop in Indianapolis. Phil in gloves was a different Phil, a remote being quite out of hailing distance. He was torn between admiration for her dressed-upness and rebellion against a splendor that set her apart like a goddess for timorous adoration. Standing beside and a little behind her, his soul was shaken by the quick shadowings of her lashes. He was so deep in thought during this silent contemplation that he started and blushed when she turned round suddenly.
"We're terribly solemn, I think," she remarked, regarding him carelessly.
This was unfair. She had no right to look at him in that fashion, taking his breath away and saying something to which he could think of no reply whatever. Amzi and Perry had wandered away out of sight. She had spoken of solemnity; it was a solemn thing to be alone with a girl like Phil, on a day like this, under a fleckless sky, and with the scarletmaples and the golden beeches gladdening the distances. Without looking at him, Phil extended her monologue:—
"I like cheerfulness myself."
"I'm not so opposed to it as you may imagine," he replied, smiling. "I'm not much of a talker. I've been alone a whole lot, in lonesome places where there wasn't anybody to talk to. I suppose talking is a habit. When there are people around who talk about things it's natural to get into the way of talking. Isn't that so?"
"I suspect it is," Phil answered. "While my critics haven't exactly said that I talk too much, they agree that I talk at the wrong time. Let's all be seated."
She dropped down on the grass, and smoothed her skirt. It was the best everyday dress she had ever owned and she meant to be careful of it. Her patent leather oxford ties were the nicest she had ever had, and she was not without her pride in their brightness. Fred seated himself near her. His clothes were his Sunday best, and none too good at that; he was painfully conscious of the contrast of their raiment.
"Your brother Charlie talks a good deal. I saw him the other day," said Phil.
"Yes; Charlie talks mighty well. He can talk to anybody. Where did you meet him?"
"In town, at father's office."
"Oh; he was there, was he?"
It was plain that Fred was surprised that there should be any intercourse between the Kirkwoods and his brother.
"He called to see father; but he didn't see him," explained Phil, as though reading his thoughts and willing to satisfy his curiosity.
"Charlie's getting up a new trolley line. He wanted me to go in with him."
"Gave you a chance to escape from your farm? I should think you would be tempted."
"I didn't feel the temptation particularly," answered Fred; "but it was kind of him to come and see me."
"Well, there is that," Phil replied indifferently. "Youseemed to get on first-rate with Uncle Amy. Was that the first time you ever talked to him?"
"Yes. But I remember that once when I was a little chap he met me in the street over by the college—I remember the exact spot—and gave me a penny. I seem to remember that he used to do that with children quite unexpectedly. I imagine that he does a lot of nice things for people."
"Uncle Amy," said Phil deliberately, "is the second grandest man now present on earth. Daddy is the first."
"I don't know your father, except as I see him in the street."
"I suppose not," said Phil.
These commonplaces were leading nowhere, and they were becoming the least bit trying.
"My aunts have decided that the Montgomerys and the Holtons might as well bury the hatchet. They're going to ask your Uncle William to my party. They can't stand not knowing your aunt."
He did not at once grasp this. He was only dimly conscious of Montgomery social values and the prominence of his Uncle William's wife had not seemed to him a matter of importance. His acquaintance with that lady was indeed slight, and he did not see at once wherein Phil's aunts had anything to gain by cultivating her society, nor did Phil enlighten him. This turn of the talk embarrassed him by its suggestion of the escapade in which Phil's mother and his uncle had figured. Phil was not apparently troubled by this.
"They didn't invite you to my party, did they?"
He did not know exactly whom she meant by "they"; and he had not heard of Phil's party.
"No," he answered, smiling; "they probably never heard of me."
"Well, you will be invited. Your brother and sister are coming. Your brother Charlie told me so. He's going to give up a trip to New York just to be there."
Phil, he reflected, had been pleased by Charles'smagnanimity in changing plans that embraced the magical name of New York to be present at her coming-out party. From his knowledge of his brother he felt quite sure that Charles must think it worth while to abandon the visit to New York to pay the tribute of his presence to a daughter of the Montgomerys. This contributed to Fred's discomfiture and made it more difficult to talk to Phil. On the face of it Phil was not a difficult person. He had seen her dance round a corn-shock in the moonlight, and a girl who would do that ought to be easy to talk to; and he had seen her, aproned at her kitchen door, throw an apple at a cat with enviable exactness of aim, and a girl who threw apples at cats should be human and approachable. It must be her smart city frock that made the difference: he hated Phil's clothes, and he resented with particular animosity the gloves that concealed her hands.
She saw the frown on his face.
"I don't believe I heard you say whether you were coming to my party or not. If you expect to travel about that time you needn't put yourself out, of course. You shall have one of our regular engraved invitations. How do you get mail out here?" she ended practically.
"R.F.D. 7. It will be thrilling to get something out of that bird's nest besides bills, fertilizer and incubator circulars, and the bulletins of the Department of Agriculture. Thank you very much. But if, after conferring with your aunts, you find that they don't approve of me, it will be all right."
"You have funny thoughts in your head, don't you? Don't you suppose I'm going to have something to say about my own party? Just for a postscript I'll tell you now that I expect you to come. If I've got to have a party I want to have as many fellow-sufferers as possible."
"Does that mean"—and Fred laughed—"that you are not terribly excited about your own party? It sounded that way."
He was not interested in parties himself; he had hardlybeen to one since he was a child, and the thought of such an imposing function as he assumed Phil's coming out would be appalled him. And there was the matter of clothes: the dress-suit he had purchased while he was in college had gone glimmering long ago. The Sunday best he wore to-day was two years old, and a discerning eye might have detected its imperfections which a recent careful pressing had not wholly obliterated. His gaze turned for a moment toward the land in which lay his hope; he had to look past Phil to see those acres. His thoughts were still upon her party and his relation to it, so that it was with a distinct shock that he heard her say softly and wistfully:—
"It's queer, isn't it?"
"What is?"
She lifted her arm with a sweeping gesture.
"The world—things generally—what interests you and me; what interests Uncle Amy and Mr. Perry; the buzzings in all our noddles. Thousands of people, in towns just like Montgomery, live along some way or other, and most of them do the best they can, and keep out of jails and poorhouses, mostly, and nothing very important happens to them or has to. It always strikes me as odd how unimportant we all are. We're just us, and if God didn't make us very big or wise or good, why, there's nothing to be done about it. And no matter how hard we get knocked, or how often we stumble, why, most of us like the game and wouldn't give it up for anything. I think that's splendid; the way we just keep plugging on. We all think something pleasant is going to happen to-morrow or day-after-to-morrow. Everybody does. And that's what keeps the world moving and everybody tolerably cheerful and happy."
Phil the philosopher was still another sort of person. She had spoken in her usual tone and he looked at her wonderingly. It was a new experience to hear life reduced to the simple terms Phil used. She seemed to him like a teacher who keeps a dull pupil after class, and, by eliminating all unessential factors, makes clear what an hour before hadbeen only a jumble of meaningless terms in the student's mind.
He was still dumb before this new Phil with her a, b, c philosophy when her eyes brightened, and she sprang to her feet. Bending forward with her hand to her ear, and then dropping her arms to her sides, she said:—
"Adown the orchard aisles they come, methinks,—My lord who guardest well his treasure chests,Attended by his squire and faithful drudge,And back to town I soon must lightly skipElse father will be roaring for his tea."
She was, indeed, a mystifying being! It was not until the absurdity of her last line broke upon him that he saw that this was only another side of Phil the inexplicable. She threw up her arm and signaled to her Uncle Amzi, who was approaching with Perry. The interruption was unwelcome. It had been a bewildering experience to sit beside Phil on the sunny orchard slope. He had not known that any girl could be like this.
"Do you write poetry?" he asked, from the depths of his humility.
She turned with a mockery of disdain.
"I should think you could see, Mr. Holton, that these are not singing robes, nor is this lovely creation of a hat wrought in the similitude of a wreath of laurel; but both speak for the plain prose of life. You have, therefore, no reason to fear me."
In a moment they were all on their way to the house; and soon Phil and Amzi were driving homeward.
"What was Fred Holton talking to you about?" asked Amzi, as he shook the reins over the back of his roadster.
"He wasn't talking to me, Amy; I was talking to him. He's a nice boy."
"He doesn't run so much to gold watches and chains as the rest of 'em. He seems to be pretty decent. Perry says he's got the right stuff in him." And then, with more animation: "Those Holtons! Thunder!"